WIX recently released a series of commercials comparing WP unfavorably to Wix. The series is titled “You Deserve Better”, and includes …
- Watching Tutorials to Fix Your Site?
- The Update Button of Doom
- White Screen of Death…Is That You?
- Conflicting Plugins
- All Those Updates Can Drive You Crazy
- Hackers? Again?!
The ads depict a WP user going through an emotional crisis, working with a therapist, trying to decide whether to stay with WP or move to Wix. The ads are one-sided and unfair (what ads aren’t?) – greatly exaggerating the flaws of WP while extolling the virtues of Wix.
WP – for some bizarre reason (more on that later) – responded. Wix responded to WP’s response. The whole thing has been remarkably entertaining.
My POV …
The ads are damn funny. They poke glorious fun at WP issues like conflicting plugins and frequent updates. None of these issues are made up – any long-time user of WP has experienced issues with updates and plugin conflicts – just wildly, comedically exaggerated.
There were several ways for WP to deal with this …
- Ignore it completely. Wix is not a serious competitor to WP. As of this post WP has about 65% of the CMS market share, WIX has about 1%. By even acknowledging the ads, by stepping into that arena, WP legitimized WIX as a competitor. That didn’t need to happen. WP’s response – and those of it’s surrogates – also brought much more attention to the ads. Have the people in charge (PIC) at WP never heard of the Streisand Effect?
- If the PIC at WP somehow felt compelled to respond, why not do so in a humorous way? Something like “We agree that one would have to be crazy to switch from WordPress.”
- Or, respond in a gracious way. Something like “We’d like to thank all those who point out opportunities for WordPress to continue to improve. We look forward to ongoing engagement with our 500 million satisfied users to keep the WordPress experience the absolute best available.”
- Or, the PIC at WP could respond like spoiled little school girls who were bested in a prank at recess. This was, unfortunately, the path taken. You can read Matt Mullenweg’s deranged rantings here: Wix and Their Dirty Tricks.
By weirdly, emotionally playing the victim, the PIC at WP left themselves wide open to a counter punch from Wix. Wix partially muffed the opportunity by not using humor – after all it was working so well, and would have been so easy. Something like “We perfectly understand Matt’s anger and anguish. After all he works with WordPress every day.” Instead, Wix comes across as a bit whiney themselves, using a point-by-point argumentative approach they are unlikely to win: Dear Matt Mullenweg: Another Open Letter from Wix’s CEO, Avishai Abrahami.
That’s where it stands and that may be the end of it. But I hope not. This is fun.
